USA Hockey announced its preliminary roster for the 2026 IIHF World Championship on Thursday, with the tournament beginning in just over one week in Zurich and Fribourg, Switzerland.<\/p>\n
Four members of the 2025-26 Chicago Blackhawks were named to the roster \u2014 Sam Lafferty, Oliver Moore, Wyatt Kaiser, and Drew Commesso. Scott Powers of The Athletic reported in late April that Lafferty, Moore, and Kaiser<\/a> were expected to represent the Red, White, & Blue in Switzerland, and Commesso will now join them.<\/p>\n Should Moore and Kaiser crack the final roster, it will mark the first appearance at the World Championship for both players in their young careers. <\/p>\n Moore, a native of Mounds View, Minnesota, played for the United States Development Program as a junior from 2021-23. He also represented Team USA at the 2023 U18 World Junior Championship, the 2024 U20 World Junior Championship, and the 2025 U20 World Junior Championship, winning a Gold Medal in all three tournaments.<\/p>\n Kaiser, a native of Andover, Minnesota, has represented the United States twice before, playing in the 2020 U18 Hlinka Gretzky Cup and the 2022 U20 World Junior Championship.<\/p>\n Lafferty, from Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania, played in the 2022 World Championship for Team USA, recording three points (1G, 2A) in 10 games. The 31-year-old forward is set to become an unrestricted free agent this summer and isn\u2019t expected to be re-signed by the Blackhawks.<\/p>\n Commesso, a native of Norwell, Massachusetts, has loads of International experience under his belt for being only 23 years old. In addition to playing for the U.S. Development Program from 2018-2020, Commesso also appeared in the 2019 U17 World Hockey Championship, the 2021 World Championship, the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, and the 2023 World Championship. The 2020 second-round pick will become an unrestricted free agent on Jul. 1 but is likely to receive an extension from the Blackhawks.<\/p>\n Team USA is set to train in Mannheim, Germany, starting May 8, and will later play a pre-tournament game there against Germany on May 10. The U.S. will officially open tournament play in Zurich on May 15 against host Switzerland at 8:20 p.m. local time\/1:20 p.m. CT. Each of the United States\u2019 games in the tournament will air on NHL Network.<\/p>\n For more Blackhawks news, visit Chicago Hockey Now<\/a> and like our Facebook Page<\/a>.<\/p>\n Follow us on X:<\/p>\n @chihockeynow<\/a>, @JackBushman2<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"USA Hockey announced its preliminary roster for the 2026 IIHF World Championship on Thursday, with the tournament beginning…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":569668,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5115],"tags":[63910,521,37,96,5263,490,5,4,857,11083,3255,63911,1570],"class_list":["post-569667","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-chicago-blackhawks","tag-2026-iihf-world-championship","tag-blackhawks","tag-chicago","tag-chicago-blackhawks","tag-chicagoblackhawks","tag-drew-commesso","tag-hockey","tag-nhl","tag-oliver-moore","tag-sam-lafferty","tag-team-usa","tag-team-usa-world-championship","tag-wyatt-kaiser"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116537245311435267","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/569667","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=569667"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/569667\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/569668"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=569667"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=569667"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=569667"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}